


Celebrar tu nombre (y salir contigo, disfrazado de horizonte)

by dexterously



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Fluff, Footy Secret Santa, M/M, Pining, with a teaspoon of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 16:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3074333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dexterously/pseuds/dexterously
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Thing is, I’ve always thought Sergio and you had some platonic love going on,” Piqué started, “Even though I only had ever seen one or two matches of you guys. That tells you how deep this thing goes.”</p><p>“Like, and I quote Gerard here: We thought you had a bro boner for each other.” Dani managed a straight face all through it. </p><p>Or: Kun might need a press release to clarify his new autobiography is not a romantic book.</p><p>The rest knows better than that, anyway (except Leo).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Celebrar tu nombre (y salir contigo, disfrazado de horizonte)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hellabaloo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellabaloo/gifts).



> Late christmas gift for penniform, whose request made me the happiest woman here. I'm sorry it's already shy to 2015, dear, have a happy new year nevertheless!

Chances were, once Kun’s autobiography hit release, there would be some revelations. 

Leo might had been underestimating this supposition, he’d read the whole thing before it was published, and to said it would arise questions exactly, well. If you knew the man for a while know, the book was a revision itself. This much he thought, after the foreword was long done, and the only next thing he needed to do was to keep preparing himself for the first Clásico of the season. 

His expectations faced a downhill fall once the match rolled around and, with that, the acrid and foul taste of a lost seeping in his tongue—this big, threatening game that has them facing the wreck of the best succeeds to behold and be the owner of at the start of the season. Almost nothing had him lifting his head, if not his family, closest friends, and the text that Kun left him for the aftermath, knowing Leo wouldn’t care for his phone even if it burst into flames from all the sympathy messages; that read: 

_you’d still be the best for me even if you lose all clásicos!!!!!_

In the greater scheme no one knew about, and the way the universe knew how to balance itself out, Leo kept alive simpler thoughts, a instinctual, upward system, and maybe the reward for this was proven to Leo when the match against Sevilla came, almost a month after the unforgiving meeting with Real Madrid. 

In hindsight, he couldn’t exactly tell if something was off when he entered the locker room, although he had to ignore the blatant staring Piqué met him with once he walked past the defender. Not until Leo sat in the bench to tie up his cleats did Gerard drop an arm around his shoulders, pulling him towards his side. His training bag flopped to the floor.

He talked on a private tone, “You really had this one hid under a rock, am I right?”

Leo stopped and glanced at Gerard, throwing him a wary look, but his relaxed instance didn’t change. “What was hid under a rock?” He asked, not knowing what to ask exactly anyway. 

“Your everlasting love?” Piqué clarified, matter-of-factly. 

That made Leo straighten his back, his neck twisted to see better at Gerard. “I don’t really think I’m catching stuff here.”

Piqué shrugged. He tossed his hands into the air, feigning frustration. “That’s not the only thing you haven’t caught, Leo, dude,” And he continued, “That’s why I’m here for.”

“Right.” Leo guessed it should be the right thing to say. Piqué hoisted his training bag, searching through until he took out a book. Leo’s response didn’t await. “Kun’s book?” 

“Yeah.” Gerard agreed. “Listen. I’m your friend, right?”

“You believe.” He smirked. 

“And this is what _friends_ do.”

“You… Believe.” Piqué glared at him, and Lionel lifted one shoulder, unscathed and humored. 

“Dani, drag your ass here!” Piqué yelled, and the Brazilian trailed after his call while putting over his jersey. Once he was close enough, Piqué said: “Back me up, yeah? He might get violent.”

Dani sent him a knowing smirk, “Ohhh, man. It was Gerard’s idea, alright? Keep that in mind if you met a lawyer.” He giggled. 

Leo wasn’t sure if Dani standing there was any improvement to the confusion filling his head. He finished lacing his cleats and added, in what he thought it ended sounding like a unsure voice: “I think I’m not as convinced of this as much as I was before.”

Dani sat on his opposite side, pressing into him with a quite explicit gesture of denying him any retreat.

“Thing is, I’ve always thought Sergio and you had some platonic love going on,” Piqué started. “Even though I only had ever seen one or two matches of you guys. That tells you how deep this thing goes.”

“Like, and I quote Gerard here: We thought you had a bro boner for each other.” Dani managed a straight face all through it. 

Piqué shook his head. “You make it sound like it’s a laughing matter.” He pursed his lips. “It kinda is.” 

Leo felt as though he was an outsider on this conversation, not understanding fully it there was any joke he had to catch on. “So what?” Leo asked, crossing his arms. “This is about making fun of us?”

“Not at all,” Dani reassured. “Just to open your eyes, or something like that.”

“Definitely to open your eyes,” Gerard added. “Not to get you into hating our guts.” 

“Enlighten me, then.” He said sarcastically. 

“He regretted it almost immediately, when Gerard started to quote randomly the book and point out phrases Leo didn’t ever thought about the way Piqué showed them. «“He tends to fall asleep quite quickly and the only thing that annoys him is that I like to watch TV with the sound down. When I fall asleep, he wakes up and comes looking for the remote. When he’s asleep I have to tiptoe to the toilet and stop my phone from vibrating in case it wakes him up” See? It’s not even a joke.»

Dani was no help. He showed Leo a couple of old interviews, and although he laughed through most of them—he started to felt uncomfortable as Dani and Piqué kept and kept exposing little bits of Kun pressing past what it always had seem friendship to Leo. When the time for the match to start came around Luis Enrique called them to start going out; both defenders concluded, nodding to themselves, and talking to each other while they headed out of the locker room. Gerard added before disappearing: “It’s not over, Leo!”

 

It’s not something you’d easily set aside. As the game came to a start, regardless of anything, his attention eased back into his priorities. He believed he zoned out a little during that late goal, the ball arriving inside the net in a loitering motion: reduced to the rightful, stark principle. The world injected back in the saturated sound of the crowd breaking into an astonishing chant, raised in their feet; it made him felt what mattered most, the awareness of doing what you were ought to, the payment of the decisions you do at the darkest hour. 

The glory was—if asked to Leo, glory felt like inhaling half the earth’s oxygen, blood vessels widening with the flow of renewed and enlightened blood, tightened bones, rattling chest, the first cry that Thiago let out, his debut match in Barcelona, him breaking this historical record. Glory was an emotion that couldn’t go stale, could be an oblique ray of a dusted lightbulb, a glow of a beckoning starlight. 

His teammates threw him in the air, the hem of his jersey rid up the whole time and a smile taking up most of his face; he barely breathed, laughed until his belly tensed painfully, kept beaming far until the game was ended and won. It took little discussion to meet an agreement on what the team should do to undergo celebration, for the victory, and Leo’s especial addition. Neymar suggested hitting up a club, and to everyone’s content, even Leo nodded his approval. 

In the club, Piqué did took as personal duty to fed Leo what he considered were victories’ drinks, probably an excuse to make him stand up and try out the dance floor of the secluded VIP space, even if he kept saying they weren’t there even for three hours. It was a merely wasted three hours, he thought idly, with a tispy smirk plastered on his face like it belonged there. Leo didn’t exactly knew the hour, anyway, but he spared a thought to consider if this was the kind of celebration that was allowed after a routinely match, if not spiced with a fairly difficult record. He remembered, even with the state he currently was—the last celebration that was held so fierce with him in was the one after the World Cup’s semifinal. And it brought to his mind that these drinks were the first ones he had since they played the final. With his mind blurred, nevertheless, the thought wandered aimlessly until it disappeared in an unfocused, dark haze, Leo unable to hold them together for any drunken perusal. 

Marc, and then Jordi, tried to rise him to his feet again several times; a task that kept falling unsuccessful until Piqué joined them and made him join them all as well, in the bar. Drinks continued to being pushed over the polished wood, far more after he started to lose capabilities to withheld basic counting, and he rested his cheek in the table to laugh at the jokes Neymar and Dani pulled out together. 

The second time he used his phone that night (the first one to tell Antonella he was going to celebrate with the team) was to check all the congratulatory texts, something he thought would be fairly benign when everything slowed down a little. Piqué was dozing off in his side—saying he was summoning energies to get into the second, maybe ninetieth round, but stirred awake when Leo snickered close to his ear. 

“What’s so funny at three am?” Piqué said, blinking slowly. “Or four am. Huh. It’s a mister-y.”

“Kun’s grammar.” Leo answered simply, not stopping from typing (rather slow, too) to cast a look at Gerard. 

Piqué seemed to contemplate his friend’s reply, and his brows shoot up the second they made sense. “He’s texting you right now?”

Leo shook his head. “He left a text praising me over the record.” 

Piqué scooted over, to watch at the phone's screen. “Tell him to give you his dick as reward.”

Lionel cursed out loud. “Ah, coño. Don’t start again.”

“His fat ass?” Piqué supplied instead, trying an innocent look that truly mismatched his shitfaced appareance. Leo shot him a glare. “Chubby ass, then.” 

“ _Stop_ , asshole,” Leo put his phone down. “I’m not going to say any of that.”

“Or add any of that. I saw you typing.”

Leo frowned, his face warming the faintest. “Only a thanks.”

“Ooonly a thanks, he says,” Piqué cried. “You break this cursed record, you secretly thinks you’re the Second Coming—but you can’t tell the man, hey, I’m up for the nasty, sweaty best wishes?”

“Exactly,” and his eyes opened in horror. “Wait. Shit. No.” 

“Shit, _yes_.” Gerard rushed to grab Leo’s phone, pulling him out of reach as soon as Leo tried to get it back. 

It was one of the most childish fight he had been involved in a while, to say the last, and both of them struggled to not let the other had the upper hand at any moment. Gerard fell off the barstool in an aborted movement, but it served as the right opportunity to use both his hands if only for a few seconds, Leo snatching his phone afterwards. The message bar and the screen were empties. He pointedly looked down at Piqué, who in reply shrugged, still on the floor. 

A while after, things came to an end, with most of them in no decent condition to drive. Leo was grateful he caught a cab to come to the club, and the same familiar, private cab was outside the place after everyone started leaving. On his way home, a relentless feeling jostled blindly in his clouded conscience, making him wonder if Piqué did ever wrote back anything to Kun.

He didn’t remember any of it the following morning.

 

On December 6th, Kun got injured. 

It was one of the few games he could watch without schedule and appointment issues, and he sat now idly with his hand fisted over his lap and the tv turned off; the game has ended, nevertheless, the screen seemed to shine with the ruthless image of Kun collapsing in the turf, clutching his knee for dear life. Leo had to fight a wave of deprecating irony, a feeling of uneasiness that has him thinking, _Kun doesn’t need this, after playing unfit in the World Cup, after—he doesn’t, he doesn’t_. The tug sinking weight after weight in his suddenly hollowed stomach. 

It became difficult to empty his mind afterwards; to loosen himself after he saw how Kun washed his tears and walked out of the pitch with a stiffed and clearly limping stride, his head bowed low, after the camara sharpened closer to Sergio’s face, showing his eyes magnified by a thin, watery veil. As if he somehow knew about the apprehensive clench in his father’s body, Thiago refused to be put to sleep in his usual hour. He clang to Antonella, babbling relentlessly and standing in his crib once he had lain there. A few minutes shy to midnight, Leo picked him up again, humming little words to encourage the drowsiness Thiago started to had, swaying slowly over his own axis to quieten the child, who was loosening his grip on Leo’s shirt and his head rolled in his shoulder. It took them a while; time after, Antonella kissed Thiago’s cheek and leaved the room, murmuring something about finally going to their own bed, but Leo stayed behind, brushing the soft bangs of his sleeping son. He said, in a hushed and indecipherable tone, one that he couldn’t explain even under the best excutrine; “You’re sad too, yeah?” But Thiago didn’t answer, out like a light. 

The next day, with the match against Espanyol approaching rapidly, Leo awaited for the exhaustion to kick in, having a night so unrelenting like that one was. He couldn’t exactly tell if it was tiredness what felt like crawling in the inverse of his skin, or something a tad underneath, a worry that writhed enough until it became a physical ache. He flicked open a new text in his phone, seconds before leaving for the game. If he hesitated even before writing anything, he’d say he didn’t had doubts for that he pressed firmly the send button, an ‘ _are you ok?_ ’ travelling its way to Manchester.

He called Kun after, and the phone call lasted almost four hours.

 

The revelation, as impromptu and absurd it was, leaved Leo with a different perception that occupied his brain quite a lot of time, unconsciously, where he rethought most of the menial things he ever shared with Kun—if they ever meant something else, and most tragically, if it would had made the difference. 

As it is, Gerard picked on his distracted demeanor easily enough, even if Leo himself couldn’t point out he was engrossed in such things. He teased him back and forth, before and during training for the Champions League match against Paris Saint-Germain, and he purposely emphasized on the anti-climactic mood Lionel came back with from the international break. 

He held Leo with a mild embrace of his arm over his neck, and Leo squirmed, sensing what was all that about. “Let me get this straight,” He began. “You see him on international break, sí? But you don’t take a single step to lead stuff, I don’t know, under lovey-dovey radar?”

Leo got rid of his arm, forcing Gerard to back off after they struggled silently. Leo thought about allowing the joke adrift unanswered, but what encouraged any word from him is that the international break went pretty much like Piqué had said; “It didn’t happen anything.” And that was all his friend needed to know, Leo keeping the memory of Kun sneaking odd glances when he thought Leo wasn’t watching him right back, just the same, and how he acted unusually silent around Leo, sometimes. 

Piqué leaved the joke to die at that, patting Leo’s shoulder and jogging after Marc afterwards. Luis called everyone to pair up, as to start stretching, and Leo moved reluctantly towards Javier. The midfielder looked thoughtful but didn’t add anything resembling the conversation Dani, Piqué and Leo had in the locker room before the match against Sevilla, even though he kept glimpsing at Leo’s direction from time to time, with a meaningful stare showing in his eyes. At night, sitting on the edge of his bed, Leo felt grateful Mascherano abstained himself from mentioning anything during an insightful moment, as if he could sense Leo was fighting against some irksome, problematic, misleading thoughts that rendered him incapable of focusing, with an itch the whole length of his sternum all day. If he went past morning training that smoothly it was by conditioning odds, the array of his thoughts trailing him elsewhere outside the fully involvement he usually minded. 

He rubbed a hand over his face, tired and bemused, yet, mostly dissatisfied over the fact that he needed an outsider to point this out for him, to give a name to what sat in front of him like it was a surreptitious secret—when he always had clung to the certainty that if he wasn’t good with people, he was good when it regarded _Kun_ ; he has known him long enough to welcome that confidentiality. Now, how could everything not be seen like he deliberately feigned ignorance to dissuade Kun from making any move? How could the ones that knew (people, other people than Gerard and Dani and Mascherano, people that he met and ones he didn’t know existed may know now, Leo thought) not believe that maybe Kun waited for Leo to realize, being him not that subtle and placing it so straightforward in his book?

Leo stopped before he regretfully deepened on that path of thinking. He went to sleep with his face reddening a little, his notions mutating slowly while he drifted afar from consciousness. In the morning, with the daylight casting obscured shapes in his room, he woke up with the barest of recollection of a dream. Soothing the creases in his sheets, he tried to bring up the memory to the conscious eye of his mind— but all he could do was prompt the start of a headache rather than convincing images. It would come to him with time, he mumbled to himself. 

 

Accepting facts (taking in things just as they were, without incertitude to spare) came with a surprising feeling of relief, of taking control after he thought he was reaching a dead end. But with that, it also bloomed the belief that maybe Piqué had the wrong approach to start with, that maybe Kun being the one that was in love wasn’t exactly accurate. Recognition lasted until anxiety stepped in, and Leo broke any doubts about himself to begin querying if at this stage of his life, at this point so far from the beginning, he was about to get fucked over. 

Things didn’t progress the slightest bit once Kun, closer to Christmas and before Leo would travel with his family, said he was making him a visit in Barcelona. Leo breathed into his hands to whisk away the numbing feeling in his fingers, what with the cold wind ranging at the outdoors of his house, regardless of the warmth surround of his thick sweater. He unwillingly let the nagging sense of disarray abound in his system again; for different reasons this time, and an overwhelming feeling sank onto him just like the crisp breeze, likely to intimidation—only that Leo hasn’t face such impressions in a long while, learning to overcome them by running fast and faster, towards the goal, by cleansing out the tug in his stomach with a gulp of resolutions. This time, it made his nerve endings a contradicting mayhem, leaving him standing weakly over his resolve. Confronting Kun over his seemly new infatuation didn’t act to him as a priority, he realized. All these opportunities he talked to Sergio came across with a bare detachment, like he never meant to let him know Leo was swimming a little too far from the friend shore. 

When Kun announced he was about to arrive to his house, Leo did stamp on his panicking quite effectively, to greet him warmly while readjusting himself to see Kun in front of him after the international break, after he, ah, came to terms with a few issues. 

Antonella had to make some late Christmas’ shopping, and she declined him from accompanying her if he had to wait for Kun to show up. Thiago, on the other hand, stayed with him, eating a cup of jelly for _merienda_ and watching cartoons in the tv of the living room. It merely eased the silence that fell on them, after they talked about Benjamin, Manchester City, Barcelona (tiptoeing carefully around the upcoming UCL match) and a few other topics they both knew about. Antonella came home at six pm, full of bags and exhausted, and she joined them to share laughs together. 

She and Thiago were upstairs before nine, and Leo's excuses for Kun to stay ran short. He said with a smile: “I booked a hotel room close from here, so we can see each other before we had to travel, no?” 

“It’s still early, though,” He tried. 

Kun laughed. “I want to be here early tomorrow before you catch the flight. Won’t happen if I stay here until midnight.”

“Not until midnight,” Leo knew his attempts at not looking lame were likely to fail now. “I, um, I—”

“Yeah?” Kun stared at him. 

“I—guess you’re right. It’s late,” He fought down any urges to say something else, anything that was, surely, more important to him. “I’m glad you came here.” _For me_ , went unsaid. 

“Oh,” Kun furrowed his forehead. “Yes. I’m your friend, no? This is what friends do.”

Or are for, Leo thought. But he knew no such thing, he didn’t know if what Gerard did was for Leo’s sake after all, if he acted as a truly friend, he didn’t know if Kun came to his home because it was what friends did; with Kun about to walk out the front door, Leo suddenly hesitated if he could be Kun’s friend anymore now, the friendship people talked about, without feeling the need to kiss him and to touch him and most urgently, be his. 

Kun paused his tracks at the entrance. “I guess we’ll see each other tomorrow, then?”

Leo bit his lip. “Yeah,” He breathed. God, he couldn’t start to understand how that night figured its way to go downhill, but he guessed it began with him. “Here, I’ll wait till you get a cab.”

Kun walked a few steps and then he stopped again, when Leo stepped outside and was about to close the door, and he came back to push Leo backwards and kick the door shut. He pointed at Leo with a sole, accusatory finger.

“Okay, I really, really tried to understand,” Kun said. “Even if we both know I’m not the smartest of the two of us.”

“Huh, what?” Leo belatedly asked. 

“ _You_ , you damn fool,” Kun expressed frustratingly. “First, you write me this text and I thought we could figure it out on international break, I thought you finally realized that I—but you only _ignored me_ , and then—”

“—What text?” Leo interrupted him. Kun closed his mouth, watching him with a disbelief look. 

“The text you send me after you broke that last record.” Kun explained. 

“I didn’t write anythi… Oh.” Leo groaned. “ _Fuck_.”

“You didn’t write it?” His friend murmured. 

“No, it was—” But Leo thought better, “I mean. I,” His throat tightened, but he could manage: “I didn’t write it, but I meant what it said.”

Even though he didn’t even know the text existed after all. Kun looked like he was thinking it all over, and Leo really expected Piqué to pull that one out for the good. Then Sergio made a tiny, smiling sigh, and Leo’s ribcage dutifully tried to split in half, hope broadening inside him.

 

Kun didn’t fidget under Leo’s gaze, but he felt the unmistakable warmth that rippled across his chest when Leo focused on him and him alone, the one that made time pass by like a sunlit day on a languid dream. He stepped forward, slow enough that Leo could withdraw if anything like that wasn’t what he wanted. Leo was far ahead from that, thankfully: he grabbed a fistful of Sergio’s soft shirt and closed the gap entirely. As far as kisses can go, this one chastised Kun’s expectations—not being fully what he considered an accurately portrayal of how it could had been; the outline, judging the contented sigh that he let out, it was way better. Leo leaded the kiss with tender pressure, almost not there, a deliberated heat that nevertheless lighted Kun up.

His laugh had a breathless end that puffed against Leo’s lips. “Even when you had that mop for hair,” he said, giving Leo’s mouth a little peck. “I liked you back then. I just wanted to say it.”

Leo, honest to God, pouted. Kun suppressed a giggle. 

He tugged the strands of Sergio’s strange mohawk, “Like you’re one to talk,” Leo told him. “You can’t be seen with me while you do this to yourself.” Leo shoved him softly and Kun stumbled a bit, caught off guard, a muffled _oof_ escaping him when he landed on his ass. 

Lionel crossed his arms, but Kun started laughing openly. The forward chuckled. This was good, Kun thought. 

 

“Gerard, it was essentially your fault. You sent the text and then you _deleted it_ ,” Leo replied, making his mounth a thin line in discontent. 

“So you wouldn’t freak out once you woke up hungover,” Piqué explained, and then pointed out: “I knew it would get on your nerves and you would start doubting crap.”

Leo did second guessed since the day Piqué quoted the book itself, but he refused to share this so. “I had to explain Kun that the text was a joke you sent, no one hacked my phone and, most importantly that I, huh,” He lowered his voice a bit, “Kinda meant what it said.” 

Piqué heard it just right, anyway. “And you are blaming me instead of getting me a gift, or inviting me to your wedding, whatsoever?”

He didn’t stutter at Piqué’s nonsense, even though Pocho cracked severalk jokes a few weeks ago, about them being dating long enough to be knocked out already. It wasn’t dating. It wasn’t. 

“Yes.” He simply answered.

“You ungrateful _hobbit_!” Geri shoute., “I made you less awkward than the whole Cristiano and James shit.” 

Leo had to arch an eyebrow at that, pausing his arguing. “What—I don’t even know what that means.” 

Geri passed from an outraged frown to a really shit-eating grin in less than some impressive five seconds. He scoffed. “You don’t have a clue on your own love life so of course it’s up to people to, like, tell you what two plus two is.” 

Leo stared. “You can tell me or I can keep going on why you—” 

“Alright,” Gerard dismissed his comment with a mocking flourish of his hand. “You see, even if everyone here thinks you two little Argentinians are quite lame,” Leo felt the strain on his eyes when he rolled them roughly, “Back at the blancos it’s a whole new level of hitting low on embarrassment.” 

Piqué talked like he didn’t act like a six year old around _Shakira_. Leo motioned him to elaborate. “Iker told me there was a lot of shitty flirting, yes? And he sent me a video. Of Cristiano. I don’t know, wooing James with the snap of his world-class hips.” Leo snorted, helplessly, and the laugh built until both of them were cackling. It was ridiculous, how this could situation turned out to be, and he wasn’t even mad that much.

“You want me to thank you for, what, not dancing with Kun?” He started after a little while. 

“Exactly,” Piqué said. “No embarrassing video, so it all goes smoothly when you get his dick on international break. You own me half the sex you’re gonna make.” 

“ _Gerard_ ,” Leo groaned, and Geri scrunched up his face, rethinking his wording.

“Not like that. Jesús, hombre.” 

 

It was easily the strangest thing Leo has ever encountered— how everything wasn’t strange at all. Down to Kun squinting up at the sun on a shining day in Rosario, and up to Kun smirking sleepy while he stretched on his bed; it felt like a settlement of some sort, a reassuring that didn’t get around unwelcomed, and his thoughts gathered slowly to a sole, unhurried impression: it was alright, always had been.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'ed, all mistakes are mine, but thanks to Sarah and Sam for cheering me all the way in.


End file.
